


Little Sparrow

by lesbianettes



Category: Chicago Med
Genre: Angst, Drinking, Drugs, Hospitalization, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, No Character Death, Overdose, suicidal idealization
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-24
Updated: 2019-10-25
Packaged: 2021-01-02 11:57:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21161285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lesbianettes/pseuds/lesbianettes
Summary: No one trusts Crockett.





	1. Fly So High

**Author's Note:**

> Fic and chapter titles from "Little Sparrow" by Dolly Parton

How many times has this happened? How many hospitals has he been shouldered out of because the other doctors, they don’t trust him. They never trust him to know what’s best because he figures it out faster than them. Crockett trusts his own intuition. He’s smart. He’s a good fucking surgeon, and no one trusts him. Only his patients, and what does that matter when no one else allows him to take care of them. 

He slams his hands hard against the wheel of the car. It doesn’t matter anymore. Nothing fucking matters as he drives home exhausted. The only person who trusts him is someone he’s training, and even that is on thin ice. It’s only a matter of time before Noah loses faith in him too. He had thought that maybe, maybe this would be a hospital where he’d be welcomed, where he could stay.

Stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Back at home, he goes straight for his medicine cabinet, overstocked and underused. Crockett promised himself when he came here that he would move past all this. He wouldn’t need it anymore. But he needs it. His cheeks are wet already when he curls his fingers around the white ribbed cap on one of his orange bottles. Prescribed before he left Louisiana, for when things got really bad and even he didn’t trust himself. Just the memory makes him feel like he needs this more. He hasn’t had a panic attack in months, isn’t about to have one now. Three pills, although his recommended dose is “one as needed.” This is as needed. He needs this. Three, coated in plastic and easy to slide down his throat. They need a chaser, though, and that part is easy. He’s still got three quarters of a bottle of bourbon sitting in the cabinet. Warm. He can feel it down his throat already as he walks to his kitchen.

It’s ten minutes after he takes a heavy sip of bourbon that he feels the xanax start to kick in, and it’s exactly what he needs after today. Crockett sinks down into his couch with a sigh, heavy bottle still in hand. He doesn’t have it in him to seek something harder at the moment, but this is a start. It takes the edge off today, and makes him feel just the slightest bit less like screaming and screaming until his voice goes hoarse and his ears stop working. 

He puts his phone on silent while he’s at it. He doesn’t want to hear from anybody at Gaffney tonight, or maybe ever, and it’s too soon to put in for another change. Another new hospital, another new group of people to please. He just wants to be respected, trusted. What’s wrong with him that it never happens? Why can’t he receive just the slightest amount of humanity?

Another long pull of bourbon that burns on the way down, and his head starts to swim. Pills and liquor kicking in, washing away the ache in his chest and pulling him down toward sleep so fast that he doesn’t bother trying to make his way to his bed. The soft mattress, warm blankets, sound like heaven. But he knows what this sort of high is like. He won’t be able to get there.

So he lays down and stretches out on the couch, lazily drinking a little more through it so he can stop feeling like this. He passes out fast, warm all over and no longer in pain when his eyes fall shut and his mind quiets. Quiet, peaceful, free. Finally unburdened by what the other doctors think of him. Crockett rests.

When he wakes up the next morning, his head hurts, and his phone is lit up with missed calls. So now they want his attention. The contacts burn against his eyes. Med’s general phone. Lanik. Goodwin. Choi. And countless texts trying to figure out where he is so they can bring him back in and break him down more. God, but he’s so tired. 

He chases his hangover with more bourbon, although there’s much less left in the bottle than he remembers leaving the night before. Time to buy more, he supposes. That’s doable. He doesn’t so much as pick up his phone as he rubs his eyes and stretches out the cricks in his back from sleeping on the couch. Rumpled scrubs. Messy hair. Alcohol on his breath. He’s messy, and he’s alive, and he goes back to the medicine cabinet. Another xanny to stave off caring too much what he looks like right now as he lumbers down to the corner store. Good bourbon is for worthy doctors. Cheap bourbon is for him, even if it burns and makes him throw up when he drinks it too fast.

They recognize him, when he gets there. His total is rung up on the till when he sets down his bottle, and the cashier smiles at him lazily. If he didn’t feel like such shit, Crockett might invite him back to his apartment for another time waster. But he’s tired. And he’s busy pitying himself. So he pays, he goes home, and he drinks to the melody of his phone’s low battery sound cutting through the phone calls still coming down on him.

“Fuck you,” he tells his phone.

It beeps at him one more time and dies.

Serves it right. He searches through his medicine cabinet for more, something more to take the edge off. He’s good on the xanax, and he’s still clear-headed enough to know that taking too many with the bourbon will kill him. Would that be so bad? 

There are other bottles in here, collected from psychiatrists trying to fix him and never getting anywhere close. He’s got a half bottle of prozac. Some loose lamictal. His xanax. There’s a baggie of skimmed oxy from his friend’s surgery way back when. The oxy might help. He really is a shit doctor, isn’t he? Taking pills from his friend. It was with permission, he didn’t steal them, but he still took them from someone who needed them more than him.

Either way, they’ll make the pain stop. He digs a few pills out and swallows them with the help of his drink, and then he’s okay. He’s okay, he tells himself, making it all the way to his bed this time and curling up in a ball atop the soft sheets. So soft. He should buy more soft things, he thinks to himself.

He’s on his own, and no one is coming to stop him. He can do whatever the fuck he wants, including shove his pants down and give himself some real pleasure, if he feels like it. A real person would feel better, but Crockett’s not in the mood to deal with it right now. And actually, come to think of it, any movement feels like too much effort. He can just lay here, for as long as he wants. 

Crockett’s eyes are heavy. But he doesn’t sleep. He hurts, He hurts, he hurts, he wants to scream until everything stops hurting so badly and there’s someone who comes to lay beside him and tell him he’s worthy. He’s trusted. He’s respected. That’s too much to ask, but it’s all he’s ever wanted or will want.

Please, to anyone listening, give him a reason to breathe. A reason to keep living when everything hurts so fucking much and he’s alone in the world. His patients, maybe, but he can’t help them. He can’t help anyone, and that’s why he’s here by himself getting fucked up and crying.

When he started crying, he isn't sure. But it’s happening. Not little tears, easy and quick, but fat drops rolling down his cheeks and choking sobs that he can’t breathe around. His bedding is going to be a mess. But it doesn’t matter, nothing matters, and he just wants it all to stop as he keeps drinking around each tear. He drinks until he stops crying, until he stops hurting, until the world around him is gone and he’s just laying there, cuddling a bottle like a long lost lover. 

He lays there for who knows how long, drifting in and out of fitful and unrestful sleep once the tears come to an end. He finishes the bottle. And at some point, there’s a lot of noise against his pounding head, and hands on his face, on his chest.

Crockett rests. 


	2. And Feel No Pain

Ethan carries Crockett into the ED. Just driving him was faster than waiting for an ambulance, and he’s heavy but peaceful. Peaceful, but dead to the world. He reeks of bourbon, probably from the empty bottle Ethan had to pry out of his hand, and he has no idea what else he took because his pulse is weak, thready, and there was a whole pharmacy in his medicine cabinet. How did no one notice this? It’s clearly not a new problem. 

“Maggie,” he calls. She directs him to a room to set Crockett in, because at this moment he’s Crockett and not Dr. Marcel. And his heartbeat is so slow, so weak. His breathing shallow. Ethan wants to run a tox screen, but first he needs to find out if Crockett’s about to die. He’s dealt with so many overdoses, but they’ve never been someone he knows personally, he sees so regularly, he cares about more than he’d like to admit. 

Crockett’s hooked up to the monitors, and Ethan has to think, think. Anything Crockett took, it was orally. Pills and liquor. They’re going to need to pump his stomach, get an IV into him. His breathing, Ethan needs to check on his breathing. There’s so much to do and he can’t figure out where to start. He’s overwhelmed and now he can’t breathe either because Crockett is here, out cold, sick. He overdosed.

The worst thing Ethan can think of is that this was on purpose. All day, people have been trying to get ahold of him- Ethan included- with no luck until he literally broke down his door out of this exact fear. That Crockett hurt himself. 

Thank God for nurses, he decides, who put Crockett on the monitors and get a needle into his arm. Two way port, to draw or give. They’re calmer than him now. He forces himself to take a deep breath and pulls up his tablet to jot down what they’re doing.

“Run a tox screen,” he says. “I want his BAC and to find out what was in his system. He had a lot of pills in his apartment.”

“You brought him in?” Monique asks. She’s already drawing Crockett’s blood, red and thick. 

Ethan nods. “He wasn’t answering his phone, I was worried. He took a lot of something.”

It’s hard to forget everything Ethan saw in that apartment. The bathroom was full of pills. Some prescribed to him from definitely not-current dates. There were two sandwich baggies of loose pills. And there was the empty bottle of liquor in the living room, the second one in Crockett’s arms. Pumping his stomach will probably help. Ethan throws in that order too, but before any real progress is made, Crockett’s eyes open slowly. Blink shut again.

“Crockett,” Ethan says, a little more desperately than he means to. He pulls out his pen light. “Crockett, can you hear me? Open your eyes if you can hear me.”

They open just a little, just enough for them to squint shut again when Ethan shines the light into them. 

“C’mon, Crockett, open your eyes. Let me see you.”

This time, he doesn’t respond, and Ethan has to pull his eyes open to check for response. His pupils are dilated, but they do contract a little with the light, which is a good sign. He needs to take a deep breath.

“Is he conscious?”

Ethan taps his palm lightly against Crockett’s cheek a couple times. Nothing. “Not anymore. We just had him for a moment. Can you get me a mask for him? I don’t like the looks of his blood oxygen.”

She gives him one, and as she hooks it up to an oxygen tank, Ethan slips his hand underneath Crockett’s head and lifts it ever so gently to fix the mask properly. Crockett’s got a shadow along his jaw, sharp and prickly, that scratches Ethan’s hand. His skin is hot to the touch. 

“When you get a chance, hang some saline? He’s probably dehydrated.” Ethan doesn’t know why he’s still touching Crockett’s face. “I’m going to check in on my other patients. Let me know when his labs come back.”

He checks in on his other patients, but he can’t stop thinking about Crockett, glancing back at him and the way he lays there, so still. So quiet. In life, he’s always moving. Usually talking. But now he’s empty, and Ethan’s got a sinking feeling that Crockett isn’t going to wake back up from this. Not fully. His heartbeat is stronger, his stats improving, but he hasn’t made a movement since his eyes were briefly open. Ethan watches him during his loops and, in a moment of downtime, pulls a seat up at Crockett’s bedside and just watches him. Holds the hand not burdened with an IV. Watches his chest shudder up and down. He’s not dead, but he feels dead. 

“What are you doing to yourself, Marcel?” he whispers.

Crockett doesn’t so much as twitch. 

Ethan reaches up to push Crockett’s hair out of his face. It’s greasy, unwashed. Crockett wasn’t taking care of himself, was hurting himself. The lights are on but no one’s home, and Ethan wonders again what this means for Crockett. He may die. He could die, and Ethan doesn’t know what to do with that information. It doesn’t sink in. He can’t process the idea of sitting here and watching Crockett’s body give up on him. If only he would just wake up.

As soon as he thinks of that, like there’s a higher power listening, Crockett’s eyes open and he starts fumbling at his oxygen mask. 

“Hey, it’s okay-”

He tries to still Crockett’s hands, but Crockett doesn’t calm down. It isn’t long before Ethan figures out why. The oxygen mask still on, he throws up, and then Ethan is the one pulling it off of him so he doesn’t choke. In movies, in media, drug abuse and overdose are pretty and they’re peaceful. Drifting away without pain. Sometimes accidental, sometimes intentionally. This is not poetic art, but something nasty and twisted and painful. 

“Okay, okay,” Ethan says, rubbing Crockett’s back as he coughs weekly. “You’re okay. I’ll get you some clean sheets and a new gown, you’re okay.”

He meets Crockett’s eyes and it’s heartbreaking. He’s crying, and struggling to breathe again, and covered in his own vomit. There’s so much to be said, none of which makes it out of Ethan’s mouth because this just hurts. He’s never in his life seen someone so broken down. He does the only thing he can think of, and pulls back to force himself into the role of a doctor again. It’s easier to be a doctor. 

“Can you tell me what it is you took?”

His voice is so stiff. It’s barely his own, and the way Crockett looks at him makes him feel like a monster, so much so that he can’t manage eye contact. Instead, he stares down at his tablet with the account of what they’ve already done, what they already know. 

“You know you could have died.”

“Yeah,” Crockett croaks, and lets his head fall back hard against the pillow. He’s in bad shape. “I’m gonna sleep a little longer.”

Ethan starts to tell him no, but it’s too late. Crockett’s asleep again, and Ethan would rub his eyes but he still has Crockett’s vomit on his hands. He steps over to the sink and washes them for longer than necessary, trying to do something useful that doesn’t make him hate himself.

Just his luck, Curry is on her way by. Cleaning up that mess is a med student’s job. Even if it wasn’t, Ethan just can’t look at Crockett anymore right now. “Grab Doris for help and clean up the patient in six. He threw up on himself and passed out.”

He can’t bring himself to tell her who’s in there. She’ll know, though, once she sees. Everyone will see that Crockett was falling apart in front of them, and not a single person noticed just how badly he was doing. It took this to see his pain. 

Ethan busies himself until Crockett wakes up again, now in a clean gown and not trying to take off his oxygen mask so he can throw up. It’s a good time to check in on him again, decide if he should put up another bag of saline. He does, however, bring a cup of water with a straw because Crockett’s mouth must be so dry.

When he approaches again, the cup held out like a peace offering. Crockett takes it in a shaky hand and maneuvers the straw under his mask while he drinks it fast. It’s empty almost immediately. Ethan takes it away and he doesn’t have the words for a situation like this. No one does. There’s no way to explain how he’s feeling right now or how sorry he is for not realizing this sooner.

“When he has the chance, Dr. Charles is going to stop by,” Ethan says.

Crockett rolls his eyes. It’s a good sign, that he’s feeling alright enough to be an asshole. But it doesn’t negate what just happened, and so Ethan does a quick check-in to make sure he’s alright. Temperature is a little elevated, but nothing to be concerned about. His eyes can track movement, and his pupils are responsive to light. He can move all his fingers and toes. He doesn’t say a word to Ethan, just follows instructions, until the quick exam is over. Then, softly, he asks:

“Will you turn off the light when you go?”

Of course Ethan does, and he draws the curtains too. Out of sight, but not out of mind. For the rest of the shift, even after Dr. Charles’ evaluation and a visit from Lanik and Goodwin and Ethan forcing himself to stay away, he wonders if this was on purpose. He wonders what happens next if it was.

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr @princessbekker


End file.
